Here’s an issue to ponder of a cold Saturday in March. Many people with some intellectual clout (i.e., they’re not stupid) claim to be religious, and yet when you press them to find out exactly what they believe, they clam up or equivocate. Some Christian academics I know, for instance, will mumble and change the subject if you ask them about the nature of the God they accept, or whether Jesus revived the dead, and then was crucified and resurrected. To me this means either that they do not believe the tenets of their religion, or that they do but are embarrassed to admit it.
And yet, as I wrote in Faith versus Fact, I am hardly aware of any religions that do not make factual claims. Here, for example is one version of the Nicene Creed from the United States conference of Catholic bishops. I’ve have bolded every factual claim:
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
It’s almost all in bold. As Wikipedia notes: “On Sundays and solemnities, one of these two creeds is recited in the Roman Rite Mass after the homily. In the Byzantine Rite, the Nicene Creed is sung or recited at the Divine Liturgy, immediately preceding the Anaphora (eucharistic prayer) is also recited daily at compline.”
Likewise, Muslims accept the revelation of the Qur’an to Muhammad by an angel, Mormons believe that the angel Moroni hid the golden plates on which the book of Mormon was inscribed, and then revealed them to Joseph Smith. Hindus, in contrast, believe in many gods manifesting parts of one reality. Buddhists don’t believe in God, but do embrace things like rebirth and karma.
The point is clear, every religion depends on a set of core beliefs, and if you reject them you’re not very credible as embracing that religion. You can hardly call yourself a Christian, for example, if you don’t believe in the existence of Jesus as a divine being, and in his crucifixion, resurrection, and a form of God made human. (Remember, “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.”)
But now all sorts of people are publishing bestselling books about how they made their way back to religion after a period of nonbelief, why atheism is wrong because it can’t explain a fine-tuned universe, consciousness, and so on. And yet these same people are willing to change their entire lives based on nonexistent evidence. Others say they don’t need no stinking evidence; they believe because it makes sense or resonates with them (this is why Ross Douthat is a Christian rather than a Muslim).
So here’s the question to ponder and discuss:
Can you really call yourself adherent to a given religion if you don’t accept the fundamental tenets of that religion?
Granted “fundamental tenets” is a slippery term, and people’s religious mileage varies, but when someone publicly professes that they are religious, it seems fair to ask them, “So tell me: which claims of your religion do you accept, and which do you reject?” For some reason, though, people treat religion as off limits in that way: they don’t have to answer you.
I occasionally visit Formerly Twitter for laughs. Recently, a guy there posted: “The Bible is either 100% true or Christianity collapses. There is no middle ground.”
Oh yeah? No middle ground? Okay. So I gave him a link to a Medium piece I wrote a few days ago that explains why there was never a global flood—and of course the story of the flood is a foundational narrative in Christianity.
The guy did not respond. No surprise there.
Great question. I ponder this at times.
Fast-thinking (Khaneman) thoughts :
-> metaphysics
-> ontology of “man”
-> Aristotle
-> individual moment-to-moment experience
-> consider “Ginsberg’s Theorem” – is atheism a ‘get out of the game free’ card?
Just brainstorming – no conclusions. There’s so much.
Addendum
-> No True Scotsman fallacy
May I suggest that most of those who recite the Nicene Creed–in church, i.e. in public–do not truly believe. They may not believe in God. They are in church for benefits, social and personal. Professional, maybe, too. Family cohesiveness. Community. While religion can be a force for evil, too, it is a force for good. Indeed, those worshipers most serious are most dangerous.
If they don’t believe in God, they they’re neither Christian nor religious.
That’s what I suspect as well. And in more liberal congegrations the ratio of those who do not truly believe might be even higher.
I always imagine such a church service as in one of those funny skits on TV. The camera zooms in on the first person and you hear his inner monologue:
— Ugh, this is boooring. Actually I don’t believe any of this. But I have to pretend to believe it all for the sake of the community. Who knows what they’ll do without a belief in God.
Camera zooms onto the next person:
— Maaan, I’d rather do something else than listening to this boring sermon. But I have to fake being a believer for the sake of all these other poor shmucks sitting here. The little people just need religion so I have to do my part so they don’t lose their faith.
Camera zooms to the next person and so on, until the last one. Turns out no one truly believes any of the core tenets of their religion but all are convinced they have to fake it for the sake of all the others who they suspect might not be able handle their life without religion and especially not without a belief in a god.
I think you are projecting your thoughts and feelings onto others.
While naturally there are some who don’t really believe and just go through the motions for various, usually social, reasons, the great majority of those with whom I have discussed such things in depth, really do believe.
And even many who, for whatever reasons, do not or no longer go through the motions, or are not associatied with any religious institution, still believe, deep down.
It seems like you should have to adhere to a creed. My impression, though, is that churches themselves have watered down their own creeds so much that it’s not clear that the sects are different in any way exception for church government (with the exception of adult baptism, which is an event not a tenet).
I think the short answer to the question is “sure.” You can call yourself whatever you want. But unless you believe the core assertions of the religion you claim to belong to there is no reason for anyone, including yourself, to believe that you “really” are an adherent of that religion. And, of course, the easiest person to fool is yourself.
I agree!
I think that a person is faking it if they don’t actually believe the tenets of the faith they claim to belong to.
But, that said, I think very many people don’t think much about it at all (their priest/minister/rabbi/imam tells them what to think). Going to church is just what they do on Sundays (or Synagogue on Saturday or Mosque on Friday). If you really pin them down, they’ll be very uncomfortable. Of course there are plenty of true believers as well.
I think believers often pick and choose, and why shouldn’t they? As long as they are honest about it, of course. I remember being quite surprised by a passage of dialogue in Boswell’s Life of Johnson on the subject. Johnson was morbidly afraid of dying and of the eternal punishment he believed could follow, and expressed his fear of being damned in a conversation with a clergyman, Dr Adam:
Dr. Adams: “What do you mean by damned?”
Johnson: (passionately and loudly) “Sent to Hell, Sir, and punished everlastingly.”
Dr. Adams: “I don’t believe that doctrine.”
Johnson: “Hold, Sir; do you believe that some will be punished at all?”
Dr. Adams: “Being excluded from Heaven will be a punishment; yet there may be no great positive suffering.”
Johnson: “Well, Sir; but if you admit any degree of punishment, there is an end of your argument for infinite goodness simply considered; for, infinite goodness would inflict no punishment whatever.”
Even in the eighteenth century, an age far more orthodox than our own, it was normal, unremarkable, for a Church of England vicar to reject the idea of everlasting torture.
Sure, they can pick and choose, but they should be able to tell you why they accept one doctrine and not the other. If they just pick and choose what appeals to them rather than what’s in Scripture, then they should be able to say that and explain why they reject other doctrines.
I agree. That’s what I was getting at when I said ‘as long as they are honest about it’.
Yes, but in a world where sound bytes rule, people want quick and easy answers. Sometimes against the scream “heretic” there is no quick and easy defense.
Different members of a religion will have different definitions of what the fundamental tenets are.
I know an Evangelical Christian who takes the Bible as the literal word of God. Other Christians I know consider the Bible an important but factually and historically flawed book written by humans, and have an abstract and progressive ethical definition of what it is to be Christian.
Well, then, perhaps they call themselves Christians, but how do they differ from humanists? If they don’t, why do they call themselves Christians?
I am a secular and cultural Jew, and an Orthodox rabbi said to me that there were contradictions and historical inaccuracies in the Hebrew Bible. Citing evolutionary psychologist Julian Jaynes, he also said that the book was written by people from long ago whose brains work differently than ours today. Defining Judaism as a civilization, he added that an atheist Jew was just as Jewish as he was.
Needless to say, I found his perspective surprisingly enlightened (by my secular definition of enlightened).
Did you have the opportunity to speak to Gretta Vosper at Imagine 7? Gretta is a Christian atheist?
And of course, there is the late atheist bishop … John Shelby Spong.
When thinking about religion, I find a few different perspectives to be helpful. When pulling the lens back from the present beliefs of a particular religious system:
1. Is belief in a god necessary for a person to have a religious experience?
2. What does belonging to a community of believers give the believer?
3. What does a community of believers provide to the nonbelievers in the greater community?
For me, thinking about religion from those perspectives is more fun than trying to tease out the specific religious notions of a particular community of believers in a god or in a specific set of unquestionable beliefs.
Our host comments on the vagueness with which some profess to favor “religion” without explaining what, exactly, they believe. A claim to be “spiritual rather than religious” is similarly fashionable. Maybe assertions like this reflect an analogue of Aztec religiosity, at least as professed by the upper castes in old Tenochtitlan.
Wiki informs us: “Nahua metaphysics centers around teotl, “a single, dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, energy or force.”[9] This is conceptualized in a kind of monistic pantheism[10] as manifest in the supreme god Ometeotl,[11] as well as a large pantheon of lesser gods and idealizations of natural phenomena such as stars and fire.[12] Priests and educated upper classes held more monistic views, while the popular religion of the uneducated tended to embrace the polytheistic and mythological aspects.”
The lesser gods in the current popular version no doubt include “Social Justice” (never defined but always divine), Critical Theory, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and legendary demigod figures such as Foucault, Lyotard, and the priestess Judith Butler.
“Can you really call yourself adherent to a given religion if you don’t accept the fundamental tenets of that religion?”
It is possible to adhere to some of the tenets of a religion but not all. Maybe one needs to ascribe to 75% of the beliefs in order to count as adherent. (Just kidding.)
To take a particular example, Orthodox Jews might claim that Reform or Reconstructionist Jews are not adherent. And they would never accept members of the Society for Humanistic Judaism as adherent. But members of those congregations would probably claim to be “adherent,” but adherent to their particular brand. (Reform, Reconstructionist, and Humanist Jews might be willing to admit that Orthodox Jews are “adherent” but that they adhere to the wrong things!) So, it depends.
Interestingly (to me) is it quite possible to be an atheist Jew. This is because Jews are a people or a nation. One can belong to the nation but not accept any of its religious tenets. (There are many of us.) That doesn’t seem to be the case for any other religions of which I am aware.
It might not be possible to be Christian-ish but it is very possible to be Jew-ish. Tee hee hee.
I am an atheist Jew and I always explain that it’s because I adhere to a lot (not all) of Jewish culture but I reject all the religious tenets. Similarly, Dawkins has called himself a cultural Christian. Clearly not a cultural Catholic though because he’d be eating fish on Friday!
Most of the Jews I know are atheist. Almost all of the Jews I know—and those to whom I am related—would immediately say that they are culturally Jewish. (Even though some refuse to eat gefilte fish.) Jews seem to make the distinction between cultural and religious Judaism readily. I wonder how common this is among Christians. Yes. I’ve read some of Dawkin’s commentary regarding his cultural Christianity. Dawkins, a rare intellect to begin with, may also be a rarity regarding cultural Christianity as well.
I do not believe that Richard Dawkins has identified himself as a Christian of any kind. He acknowledges an association with Christian cultural tradition. That doesn’t make him a cultural Christian. One cannot be a cultural Christian the way that one can be a cultural Jew. Christianity, like Islam, is always about belief.
Is it? My family in my youth consisted of atheists and agnostics, yet they visited churches, did various rituals such as Christmas Eve, and generally could pass for not very observant Catholics. I gather it was done for the very simple reason that it gives one a certain pleasure to wrap one’s life around a set of celebrations, without necessarily believing any supernatural aspects of any religious rite. And I think in my life today I miss that because I have about two friends, not counting my wife, and many community “wells” have been poisoned by Wokes, so there are fewer places to call home.
Interestingly (to me) is it quite possible to be an atheist Jew. This is because Jews are a people or a nation. One can belong to the nation but not accept any of its religious tenets. (There are many of us.) That doesn’t seem to be the case for any other religions of which I am aware.
What’s with Yazidis? I think they’re even more strict than Jews. As far as I’m aware, you can’t convert to Yazidism and both parents have to be Yazidis in order for a child to be counted as one.
I maintained a tentative adherence to Catholicism for much of my adult life. It didn’t bother me that I was compartmentalizing irrational religious beliefs from my otherwise rational life. This worked until a relationship partner began to embrace the most ludicrous aspects of Catholicism and tried to pressure me into following suit
. It had the opposite effect of what he intended. I realized that I could not be a half, or three-quarter or anything less than 100% percent Catholic, and so embraced atheism. So my answer is, you can believe a portion of a religion’s tenets and still consider yourself or be considered an adherent, as long as you don’t think about it very hard.
Religious organizations have a dilemma between tolerating a large presence of half-hearted members or alienating them altogether. Pope Francis leaned toward appeasing the “cafeteria Catholics” by not pushing them too hard; Pope Benedict XVI was more inclined to do purge the ranks of lukewarm believers.
This calls to mind the John Updike verse, Seven Stanzas at Easter, which begins
There is also the stanza
Updike is generally held to have been religious, but there’s a real adge to his writing on the topic.
Sounds like Updike followed Kierkegaard – another believer who emphasize that reason and religion were incompatible and can’t be “mediated” by metaphors and language tricks. True believers, says Kierkegaard, recognize the irreducible absurdity of their belief. Updike’s passage through the door is Kierkegaard’s leap of faith. More interesting, I think, is Kierkegaard’s application to Abraham and Isaac, where he say the ethical word for Abraham’s designs on Isaac is “murder” and the religious word is “sacrifice,” and the two cannot be mediated – those who try to excuse Abraham on the ethical plane are weaseling out of the true difficulty of being religious. (Thus, Kierkegaard, don’t blame me 😊)
I think Pinker’s new book “When everybody knows that everybody knows,…” has a lot to say about why you don’t get straight answers from people on topics like this. An excellent read, by the way!
“I am hardly aware of any religions that do not make factual claims.” I think you hit the nail on the fast-growing “spiritual but not religious” category. People want to believe that reality is more than than just a collection of objects in space, that the subjective aspects of reality – love and friendship, loss and betrayal, art and values-laden experiences – are not really reducible to (although they may be correlated to) scientific data about neurons. So they break religion into two layers – the bogus facts of the superstitious crust and a deeper layer where they find inspiration.This means can say science rules in analysis of the objective world (the world as information) – after all, science evolved as a mechanism to do just that – but that there is a subjective dimension to reality (the world as experience) that falls largely outside the scope of science (the acknowledged arbiter of objective truth). They may not be convinced that the great cycles of classical mythology or Blake’s visionary poetry have less value to us as human beings (though they have less factual value) than Newton’s laws of motion. You may think this is all nonsense (and I may agree with you 😂), but I can see how (and dare say I know some of) your “people with some intellectual clout” can explore that road. Now, the return to conventional religions, which seems a more recent trend than the drift toward “spiritual but not religious,” is a different matter and more difficult to extricate from the charge of “nonsense.”
Most people do not stop to think, it seems to me.
About politics, religion, science, whatever.
Depending on their flavour of religion or sect, if they live in a, can I say modern or sophisticated society? no one will be looking over their shoulders to see that they adhere to whatever the appropriate creed is, as handed down by some religious founder(s) or committees (like the Nicene creed). I have a friend – amazing we have never fallen out over this, but he is a god-botherer. I have no idea what the CoE says about heaven or hell, if anything, but my friend thinks I am not going to hell! How can that be just? Similarly, how many RCs use prophylactics when their church prohibits them? Probably many ‘believers’ just go with the flow, pay lip-service to their gods, do not express doubts or voice them because that would upset their social position or family/cultural life.
I suppose RCs have the ridiculous get-out… that really annoyed me when in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, (I have not read but saw on TV in 80s) the character played by Olivier has rejected the church most of his life, but on his death-bed is welcomed back into the church. Clever of the Papists to do that!
I do NOT call myself a cultural christian, though I appreciate old churches, & church music (ex-chorister!).
I suddenly wonder though… if we have to consider that in educated societies atheists are quite a high percentage of the population, surely people are pretty much the same across the world, in terms of personalities, perhaps there are atheists in the religious groups who do not KNOW they are atheists! If they lived in a different society they would be I mean. They are just cultural religionists, in a similar way to RD & Jerry consider themselves culturally christian/jewish…! 🙂
Happy Saturday to the hidden Atheists!
Your first paragraph is spot on. That’s it. The notion that most people deeply consider such things is misguided. Their beliefs may be deeply held but superficially examined. The social benefits of belonging are immediate and squelch scepticism before one has time to reflect.
I am an atheist. I define that not as a belief but as lacking a belief in the tenets of god(s)/supernatural believing religions. Like cold is a lack of heat or dark a lack of light and not a thing on its own. However, as a secular Jew, descended from eastern Europeans, I am, through experience, nurtured and imbued with cultural thinking and behavior. I do find comfort there. I guess my clannish, primate behavior is on display. I am determined, in the Sapolsky sense, to be as I am. Of course, I feel a similar affinity to those whom I have other associated activities, backpacking, philosophy, Buddhism (a bujew), sports, business, parenthood, healthcare, maleness, senior, agentic AI, music, art, etc. I find the thought experiment fascinating and always look forward to new interpretations of my experience. As if I could respond in any other way. As Ram Dass (Dr. Richard Alpert) said, It is all just grist for the mill and after all, the only dance there is.
I’ve always thought of religion as buying a car you can’t see, hear, touch, smell or taste. All you really have is an expensive random instruction manual for something that does not exist.
Precisely like ordering something from Amazon: without direct inspection, based only
on a description and picture (like scripture) and public ratings (like church on Sunday).
The big difference there is that Amazon actually delivers! 🙂
Remember when Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays? One of the anecdotal steps on my journey towards being an atheist occurred when I was in my first year at Marquette University in 1964. My parents, devote Catholics, visited me from Cincinnati to see how I was doing. They took me to one of he finer restaurants in Milwaukee in those days, a place called Frenchy’s, on a Friday night. I ordered a steak. My parents were mortified and my mother said to herself, Where did I fail? or words to that effect. (Classic Catholic guilt.)
Anyway, a month or so later the Catholic Church removed the meat on Friday ban, I think with the exception of the actual Good Friday. I saw a cartoon in a newspaper shortly thereafter that showed the devil on his thrown and one of his helpers at the door, where you could see people burning in the fires of hell beyond the door.
The caption was “Hey boss! What do we do with all these people that ate meat on Friday?” I cut it out and sent it to my parents. They never said a word about it. I sure wish I had saved that cartoon.
Well, here’s the best I could do, using Gemini:
It was by Eldon Dedini, who published a lot of cartoons in Playboy and The New Yorker in the 1960s. Unfortunately, I was unable to run down the exact publication date, or which magazine it was in (even Gemini wasn’t sure, once stating Playboy; once The New Yorker). Gemini suggests using the digital archives of The New Yorker from the mid-60s; if that doesn’t work, you’d probably have to search through the Playboys from 1964-66 or so (I don’t know if a digital archive exists).
I also couldn’t find the cartoon on the few websites that have information about Dedini.
He published a book, The Dedini Gallery, in 1961, but that’s probably too early for a Vatican II cartoon. In 2006 Fantagraphics published An Orgy of Playboy’s Eldon Dedini, but it’s $279(!! :-O) on Amazon, and probably only includes risqué cartoons anyway.
Episcopalians recite the Nicene Creed almost word for word identical to Roman Catholics, even parishes that are extremely liberal.
In addition to the points other commenters have made, I think some Episcopalians view the Creed and the Bible as “metaphorically true” and that there are “many kinds of truth”. As a scientist/mathematician I would say this is not really what I mean by “truth” although this seems to work for some people.
Some of these folks lead their lives “as if” “in some sense” the creed and Bible were true, leading to contradictions PCC(E), Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. have pointed out. This may be a gradual unconscious way of stepping away from the religion.
The “Golden Rule” itself is independent of God but maybe some “metaphorical” Christians use God as a crutch to try to do the right thing.
Faith as a habit needs no justification, no explaination. Faith is submission…
“Most people would rather die than think, and most people do”. Bertrand Russell
Harsh but true when it comes to faith. I also hold that fear of the unknown and loss of one’s agency grips the faithful and to question it is an affront to held personal values… and down the rabbit hole we go.
Many years ago C-SPAN broadcast a show about anti-Catholicism that included an interview with Raymond Flynn, former mayor of Boston and US Ambassador to the Holy See. Flynn said that any Catholic who disagrees with the doctrines of the church was anti-Catholic. Were Flynn’s misdefinition of anti-Catholic true there would be few Catholics. Pressure from people like Flynn keeps mouths shut.
A California newspaper about thirty years ago printed an article that said many ministers and priests were afraid to tell people the doctrines of their own churches because the clergy realized how the doctrines would upset their flock.
So it goes.
I was raised Catholic and was sent to Catholic primary and high schools, and attended Mass at least once a week. Yet it wasn’t until sometime late in high school that I realized we were supposed to believe that, after consecration, the bread and wine becomes the literal body and blood of Christ. Up until then I had assumed it was metaphorical, despite chanting the creed every week. It was then that I started examining every belief I thought I held, which led me to deism, then agnosticism and finally atheism.
Funny thought I had today. The discipline of biology has long been a refuge for nonbelievers, but how long will that last in our culture of God-shaped hole intellectuals? Biologists have long been in tension with the regressive left, at least since E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology. What they call biological determinism. Then evolutionary psychology. Now sex as binary. How long until we find ourselves, like Aayan Hirsi Ali, naturally in the company of conservatives and decide that, what the hell, we think there needs to be something more? Sad fate.
I can think of few groups with a long list of tenets or beliefs where I might agree with every one, yet I consider myself a member of a number of groups.
Others here have proposed that most people simply do not spend much time interrogating and debating each tenet of their church (or temple or whatever). Perhaps it simply easier to put such things out of mind and under the umbrella of faith, which can be “belief in the unprovable”.
Additionally, one might simply defer to the experts, rabbis or theologians, who have necessarily spent a great deal of time studying and pondering those issues. We all defer similarly to doctors or art appraisers or structural engineers.
Most religious communities seem to welcome anyone willing to participate, and understand that we are all imperfect. Perhaps religion is less a state of being than a process to undertake.
Or to some of us, just a comforting set of rituals one participates in as part of a community.
I think the question is of the No True Scotsman variety. People believe (whatever) because they believe – but their belief is emotional rather than logical. Asking them about adherence to the tenets is not significant compared to the strength of their emotions.
If I understand PCC correctly here, “fundamental tenets” is the issue. The word “tenet”, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, means ‘[a]ny opinion, principle, dogma, belief, or doctrine, which a person holds or maintains as true.’ The modifier “fundamental” stresses, I think, the make-or-break position: a core belief or set of beliefs that the adherent must hold to.
For example, in Catholicism (moi, RCC as a kid), the Nicene Creed contains the “fundamental tenets” because the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE was convened by the Emperor Constantine to settle a ferocious schism between the Arians and Athanasians as to whether god was three-in-one or three separate entities. The other stuff, such as the god’s virgin mother, as featured in so many other Eastern cults, was added in because fourth century Christianity was a stew of conflicting beliefs, and Constantine was determined to end the violent and increasingly deadly conflicts within the Empire over Christian religious doctrine. Athanasius and the tripartite god won.
To this day in RCC-land, if you don’t believe in the Council’s vision, you’re on the outs, whether you think you are or not. It makes a sort of internal sense. If you’re a prelate of an Imaginary Boss In The Sky, you’ve got to exert some kind of coercion over the core beliefs; otherwise, things inevitably get schismatic because, well, the boss is imaginary. (And for the thousandth time, thanks to Carl Sagan for writing, “The Dragon in My Garage”.)
I have always thought ill of the Catholic and Mormon churches for many reasons. For the former, prominent members can openly defy core tenets of the faith and remain members. I think churches should excommunicate members who don’t accept core doctrines and core teachings. If a Mormon doesn’t believe Joseph Smith’s story, but thinks being a modern Mormon is a good way to live in an SLC suburb with your neighbors, that man should be excommunicated.
When Joe Biden publicly supported abortion? He should have been denied communion and excommunicated. Not because he got one or impregnated someone who then got an abortion, but he accepted abortion and made it easier for women to get them. You’d have to excommunicate him. There is no religion you can respect if it lists rules and teaching that are requirements for members–from god–and then allow anyone to call herself a bona fide adherent.
Sorry, don’t believe any of the stuff claimed in any religion that I know about. I don’t use the word belief because it is a result of faith. I don’t use that word either. I do, however, accept things if the evidence to support them is sound. Oddly, people will refuse to accept the fact that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old while thinking the global flood was real. There can be no conversation with these people.
Question: Can you really call yourself adherent to a given religion if you don’t accept the fundamental tenets of that religion?
Conversation on Christianity: In the United States, the practical answer is often yes. Individuals may identify as Christian even if they do not accept or practice widely recognized Christian teachings. But also note that if we don’t agree on these specific Christian tenets, we seem to just create a new Christian version with our own tenets (200+ Christian denominations). I guess this is partly because of our freedom of religion here.
Note: In other religions and countries (like Iran), the answer might still be “yes you can call yourself a Christian”, but you might die if you don’t accept their state religion and its tenets. For example, when my great, great grandfather refused to convert to Islam from Catholicism in Albania, they simply cut his head off.
Maybe, a better question might be, at least for the Christian religion which I’ve studied (see http://www.christiandecisions.com), “Given that Christians basically share the same Bible, why do certain Christian faiths reject (for example) abortion and same sex marriage, while others don’t”. Maybe it’s like we democrats and republicans call ourselves Americans and accept the basic tenets of the constitution, but still love to disagree and have our way by voting to make changes to the law
But, with “religion”, the landscape can extend beyond our universe and even time itself. This raises a fundamental question. Do human beings define the ultimate principles governing reality, or are such principles established by a Creator whose truths and tenets we are free to accept or reject, but with consequences? For me, Christianity provides the answer to this fundamental question.
As a progressive Christian, I always find it funny when non-Christians tell me what I must or must not do, believe, say, etc… in order to be a Christian. There are a large number of us who do in fact consider ourselves Christians who do not believe (or are (unsure about) many of the tenets that those outside our faith maintain to be mandatory. Was Jesus born of a virgin? I personally don’t think so, but I don’t care one way or another. Was he crucified and resurrected? I personally think so, but I don’t care. Was that death somehow mandated by God so that those who believe and ONLY those who believe get to go to heaven while everybody else burns in hell? I absolutely do NOT believe that. I don’t believe my faith to be “watered” down at all! I believe that my faith hangs on what is truly important about Christ’s message, to love one another and to seek justice in the world. Everything else is what “waters” down the faith.
If you were a Christian who accepted that scripture came from Mohamed, would you still be a Christian? And, of course, you accept the fact that Jesus existed (despite no extrabiblical evidence for that) and that his message is in Scripture, though you appear to pick and choose from the Bible, neglecting the stuff you don’t like.
I am glad, however, that you find what I wrote funny. As Joe Pesci would say, “Funny how? Funny ha-ha?”
Of course, you can pick and choose your Christian doctrines: I like this one but not that one. For that matter, you can start your own sect of what you may choose to call “Christianity” as well, as many have done in the past. This is the joy and strength of our First Amendment (bless the founders for it).
But I agree with Jerry that if you don’t believe the claims of the Nicene Creed or the Apostle’s Creed, in what sense are you a Christian? Does just admiring Jesus as a moral teacher make you a Christian? Why or why not? It seems to me that this is your claim in your last two sentences:
If you reread Jerry’s original post, he does not tell you what you have to believe. He asks the question:
I think that is a very fair question. Religions are a set of beliefs. If you don’t accept the beliefs of the religion you claim to belong to, that sure seems like a contradiction to me. Of course, you are free to believe contradictory things if you wish.
It’s not just those outside your faith that think such belief is mandatory. I’m pretty sure that the leaders of all Christian sects have a list of required beliefs for their congregants. (I’m sure many people who attend various Christian churches don’t actually believe. We know that even many ministers do not believe. This seems quite dishonest to me; but it’s a free country — at least for now.)
To say that your “don’t care” whether the factual claims of (the major sects of) Christianity are true or not seems quite bizarre to me. If you don’t care, if those claims are immaterial, why are you a Christian; why would you call yourself a Christian?
If you don’t believe in (some of) the major tenets of Christianity that your fellow Christians DO believe in, how is your faith not “watered down” (compared to the mainstream of Christian belief)? Maybe you’re just offended by that phrase?
(N.b.: I was raised as a Lutheran in the 1960s and 1970s by very sincerely believing Christian parents. By the time I got halfway through university, I was an atheist, though I may not have owned that label at the time. I’ve read the entire Bible, more than once and I’m very familiar with Christian theology (we had to more or less memorize the Lutheran Catechism). I’ve also read much of: The Koran, the Hindu scriptures, The Book of the Dead, The Tau Te Ching, etc.
We did not indoctrinate our sons in any religion or in atheism. We told them what we believe: It’s a material world running according to the laws of physics; there is nothing supernatural. We also got this book The Kids Book of World Religions (highly recommended) for them to read and we discussed how different religions believe different, contradictory things.)